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This study adds to the literature on the gendered culture of the forest sector by examining testimonies of sexual harassment in relation to the gendering of forestry-related competence and organisations and the consequences that the sexualisation of social relations in organisations has, mainly for women. The empirical base of the study comprised testimonies within the campaign #slutavverkat published on Instagram to highlight experiences of sexual harassment of women in the Swedish forest sector. Qualitative content analysis of the testimonies suggested that the situations described in the testimonies in #slutavverkat comprise controlling actions that diminish women's power in the forest sector. Sexualised forms of male control and harassment thus work to remind women that they are first and foremost a representation of women, rather than of forestry professions and knowledge. In that sense, sexualised forms of male control and harassment are part of, rather than deviating from, the overall gendering of forestry as a men-dominated sphere. The study adds to organisational understandings and policy developments on discrimination and harassment and suggests that researchers and policy-makers interested in reducing inequality in forestry need to pay more attention to issues of harassment and sexualisation of social relations.

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This article adds to the understanding of men’s discursive resistance in relation to gender-equality interventions at work. Using Swedish men forestry professionals as the empirical base, the result shows how discursive resistance were performative acts, part of the construction of the same gender-equality interventions and organizational contexts that they were perceived to describe. In this case, direct opposition to gender equality provided a limited discursive position and sets of logics available in practice. Instead, the possibilities to renegotiate gender-equality interventions as unjust and unnecessary required, we conclude that the industry’s ambition to hire and promote more women was perceived to have led to the use of affirmative action and the disruption of meritocratic principles and that the problems of gender equality were placed in the traditional forestry and among “prejudiced old men,” as oppose to the more “modern” and “women friendly” forestry of today.

This article addresses how women forestry professionals articulate and interpret their experiences of being a woman and a professional in the male-dominated context of forestry. The findings suggest that the entrance of women into forestry has created openings as well as restraints within the dominant discourses of forestry organizations. Gendered constructions of skills and a workplace culture described as built on homosocial values cause women to feel questioned and disadvantaged. At the same time, women are valued for their perceived capacity to perform relational-based aspects of forestry work and as a means to reduce gender segregation. We conclude that while these openings are conditioned by discourses of gender differences and masculine privileges, they provide women, to some extent, with subjectivity and organizational space that, with time, may challenge the dominant and gendered discourses of forestry organizations.